14 DAY TRIAL // Two days ago Opera announced a new version of their browser that featured a built-in VPN service that users could turn on to safeguard their online activity from prying eyes. A Czech developer begs to differ and claims that Opera's VPN is nothing more than a proxy server.
Michal Špacek, a PHP developer, was alerted by the small text under Opera's VPN settings section that read "Secure proxy provided by SurfEasy Inc., an Opera company based in Canada."
Surprised by the "proxy" mention, Mr. Špacek fired up his developer tools and debugged how Opera's VPN actually worked. He documented his findings in a technical write-up he posted on GitHub.
"This Opera 'VPN' is just a preconfigured HTTP/S proxy protecting just the traffic between Opera and the proxy, nothing else. It's not a VPN," Mr. Špacek wrote. "They even call it Secure proxy (besides calling it VPN, sure) in Opera settings."
The difference between a secure proxy and a VPN is that a secure proxy safeguards the traffic between the browser and the proxy server, while a VPN secures all traffic, regardless of protocol.
Opera was probably wrong calling the proxy a VPN
Some people might overreact to this discovery and say that "Opera lied," but Opera is a browser, and will only handle Web traffic, so a secure proxy, in theory, is secure enough to handle all your Web surfing.
Opera might have over-marketed the feature by calling it a VPN when it's obviously not, but it's safe to use, at least for Web traffic carried out via HTTP and HTTPS. If Opera starts firing requests via other protocols, then you might want to use an actual VPN service.
As Mr. Špacek told Softpedia via Twitter, the issue is actually in the users' minds. "The biggest risk for the user here is probably false security sense. You know, we've been telling people that VPN encrypts everything and then they [Opera] put out a 'VPN' which does not do VPN things."
Softpedia has contacted Opera for a comment on this issue and we'll update the article when we receive a response.
